The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inventory

[rakovsky]

The prayer in Gethsemane seems to be an incident which Mark did not bother to make certain was plausibly sourced, particularly if he narrated no resurrection appearances where Christ might reveal what he prayed all alone in the dark of night. Even if he did intend us to understand that there were resurrection appearances, or he wrote about them and the ending was lost, the risen Lord revealing what he prayed in Gethsemane would be little different than the risen Lord revealing what the messenger said to the women, unless I am missing something.

Wasn't there supposedly an "angel" who showed up in Gethsemane to comfort him and then there just happened to be an unnamed youth who started accompanying him? Maybe it was this angel or youth.

[Ben C. Smith]

The prayer in Gethsemane seems to be an incident which Mark did not bother to make certain was plausibly sourced, particularly if he narrated no resurrection appearances where Christ might reveal what he prayed all alone in the dark of night. Even if he did intend us to understand that there were resurrection appearances, or he wrote about them and the ending was lost, the risen Lord revealing what he prayed in Gethsemane would be little different than the risen Lord revealing what the messenger said to the women, unless I am missing something.

Wasn't there supposedly an "angel" who showed up in Gethsemane to comfort him and then there just happened to be an unnamed youth who started accompanying him? Maybe it was this angel or youth.

Not in Mark, no.

[Ben C. Smith]

The prayer in Gethsemane seems to be an incident which Mark did not bother to make certain was plausibly sourced, particularly if he narrated no resurrection appearances where Christ might reveal what he prayed all alone in the dark of night. Even if he did intend us to understand that there were resurrection appearances, or he wrote about them and the ending was lost, the risen Lord revealing what he prayed in Gethsemane would be little different than the risen Lord revealing what the messenger said to the women, unless I am missing something.

Wasn't there supposedly an "angel" who showed up in Gethsemane to comfort him and then there just happened to be an unnamed youth who started accompanying him? Maybe it was this angel or youth.

The angel appears in certain variants in the gospel of Luke, as in majuscule 0171, for example: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2124. There is a young man in Mark 14.51-52, but there is no more indication that he was with Jesus and awake during the Gethsemane prayer than that the (rest of the?) disciples were with Jesus and awake during that time.

[rakovsky]

The prayer in Gethsemane seems to be an incident which Mark did not bother to make certain was plausibly sourced, particularly if he narrated no resurrection appearances where Christ might reveal what he prayed all alone in the dark of night. Even if he did intend us to understand that there were resurrection appearances, or he wrote about them and the ending was lost, the risen Lord revealing what he prayed in Gethsemane would be little different than the risen Lord revealing what the messenger said to the women, unless I am missing something.

Wasn't there supposedly an "angel" who showed up in Gethsemane to comfort him and then there just happened to be an unnamed youth who started accompanying him? Maybe it was this angel or youth.

The angel appears in certain variants in the gospel of Luke, as in majuscule 0171, for example: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2124. There is a young man in Mark 14.51-52, but there is no more indication that he was with Jesus and awake during the Gethsemane prayer than that the (rest of the?) disciples were with Jesus and awake during that time.

OK. It's plausible then.
If Luke is saying that God sent an angel to comfort Jesus, it means the angel was plausibly there or otherwise listening. I also think based on the endings of the gospels that the angel and young man who are both at Gethsemane and at the tomb are seen as the same persons.

Personally, my best guess is that Mark was written after Luke as a kind of edited down version... but I do not know that for sure.

Either way, it's plausible that the young man/angel comforting Jesus could have been with him at the prayer. It's also plausible Jesus later on told them what he was praying. I think the gospels' authors weren't expecting people to be reading this stuff 2000 years later trying to figure out how the stories fit together. Maybe they wouldn't have cared or else they would have already expected the Second Coming.

[andrewcriddle]

If all the women kept absolute silence till their deaths then there is a problems about Mark's implied source for chapter 16. Whether or not what Mark says is actually historical one can generally find a plausible answer as to how Mark got to know about this.

The prayer in Gethsemane seems to be an incident which Mark did not bother to make certain was plausibly sourced, particularly if he narrated no resurrection appearances where Christ might reveal what he prayed all alone in the dark of night. Even if he did intend us to understand that there were resurrection appearances, or he wrote about them and the ending was lost, the risen Lord revealing what he prayed in Gethsemane would be little different than the risen Lord revealing what the messenger said to the women, unless I am missing something.

In Mark IIUC Jesus prays within the hearing of Peter James and John who are drifting off to sleep (and he went forward a little). It is in Luke that Jesus is a stone's throw away i.e. probably out of earshot. IMHO we are meant to suppose that the Peter et al hear the beginning of Jesus' desperate prayer just before they fall asleep.

Andrew Criddle

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

IMHO we are meant to suppose that the Peter et al hear the beginning of Jesus' desperate prayer just before they fall asleep.

imho it may be not completely impossible that it's simply one of Mark's stories

[andrewcriddle]

IMHO we are meant to suppose that the Peter et al hear the beginning of Jesus' desperate prayer just before they fall asleep.

imho it may be not completely impossible that it's simply one of Mark's stories

just to clarify.

I'm talking about what Mark is implying, what we are meant to suppose, not necessarily what actually happened.

Andrew Criddle

[Ben C. Smith]

IMHO we are meant to suppose that the Peter et al hear the beginning of Jesus' desperate prayer just before they fall asleep.

imho it may be not completely impossible that it's simply one of Mark's stories

just to clarify.

I'm talking about what Mark is implying, what we are meant to suppose, not necessarily what actually happened.

My problem with this is that Mark himself does not seem to be concerned that the reader suppose such a thing; what are the clues that the narrator is making certain we as readers can trace the story's origins back to earwitnesses?

[rakovsky]

My problem with this is that Mark himself does not seem to be concerned that the reader suppose such a thing; what are the clues that the narrator is making certain we as readers can trace the story's origins back to earwitnesses?

Why is this necessary?

The person was writing in the 1st century when there were still the disciples or their followers around who could explain the stories.
He was writing a biography and it was for people in his era.

He was not writing a scientifically academic proof text for the world 2000 years later using modern standards.

Ancient Greek histories, Roman biographies, Josephus' writings, the Talmud - all these kinds of writings told stories in a straightforward way. Sometimes they "sourced" their claims like you want, but in many places they did not.

The Talmud tells a story where the wealthy 1st c. Galilean Nakdimon (in Greek: Nicodemus) goes and prays a request for the Lord to give rain to fill his cisterns. There is no sourcing specified, or explanation of how the Talmud got the exact words of Nicodemus' prayer. It's plausible that Nicodemus told somebody later. It's plausible that in prison Jesus told some soldier or visitor like a woman who later came to his cross what his prayer was. But there is zero literary need for Mark to make that explanation.

IMO there are way bigger problems for the objective historical certainty of the OT and NT than what you are raising. Most of the objections that IMO skeptics raise are non-issues, yet they treat them as final infallible gospel-debunking proofs. For example, at least one well-read, intelligent skeptic is so sure that Psalm 22 definitely could not describe the narrator as undergoing karah, gouging, or piercing that he describes such interpretations as "dishonest", "trolling", "lying" etc. I think it's practically a non-issue, as the Christian and Jewish Tradition typically agree that the narrator in the story is getting attacked by enemies wielding sharp instruments.

[Ben C. Smith]

My problem with this is that Mark himself does not seem to be concerned that the reader suppose such a thing; what are the clues that the narrator is making certain we as readers can trace the story's origins back to earwitnesses?

Why is this necessary?

Because without this it is hard to tell whether Mark is writing about events that (he knows) actually happened or not. If he is just writing stories (as Kunigunde suggested, for example), there is no need to trace the trail of witnesses. If he is writing stuff that (he thinks) actually happened, then it stands out that there was really no chance for Jesus to have told his disciples what he prayed in Gethsemane before he died, and our extant version of Mark lacks resurrection appearances. (At the very least, imagining an occasion between the prayer and his death is not easy.) These things bear explaining in a way that your example of Nicodemus simply does not.

You claim that the gospel of Mark is biography, but I do not think it is. (Even if some, most, or all of the events described therein actually happened, I do not think biography is the correct genre for any of the four canonical gospels.)